Stay away from a host called Vinod advertising on Airbnb in Miami, Florida. Having used Airbnb for a bunch of stays during 2016, the last one was terrible. There was a leaky roof that stained the sofa, and cockroaches, slugs, and ants infested the condo. Collection bills were piled so high in the mail box the mailman delivered armfuls to the condo. I bought pest spray and tried to control the issue. When I contacted the Airbnb Helpline, they were anything but helpful and charged me $500 so Vinod could fix his “leaky” roof claiming I made the condo sofa dirty and stained. He claimed no knowledge of the bugs crawling around. Was it coincidence the sofa was positioned under the leaking roof and he claimed I did it? Well, Airbnb sided with him and charged my credit card for damages. Consumer protection – I don’t think so!
Tag Archives: Airbnb USA
No Apartment and No Money Thanks to Airbnb
After this experience, I contacted Airbnb by telephone. I sent them documents, data and evidences of the scam I experienced through the company. I still noticed that there were ads on Airbnb pages that follow the same strategy to persuade customers to book on behalf of the corporation.
On Saturday, November 12th, I logged in to Airbnb to search for an apartment. When I booked one, I received an email telling me that they were not able to verify my payment method (which was true because I had not yet updated my profile on their system) and they advised me that if I did not do it within 48 hours the account would be suspended and I could not book an apartment through them. They informed to me to verify the method of payment, and I had to send them my full name, address, expiration date, and the last four digits of my debit card. I also added a statement from my bank with sensitive data like my account number.
Someone sent me emails at the same moment I visited Airbnb and they also asked me about verifying my account. It sounded true. In addition, I had not still updated the method of payment on the application. On the other hand, searching Airbnb, I saw an apartment in New York for January 4-7, 2017, near Central Park and Times Square. The apartment, whose host was called Tammy (attached picture), was interested in us and we read the information given that they only accept bookings through WhatsApp, at the number indicated on the Airbnb website. This was something that initially did not seem dubious because we had heard that Airbnb was a very safe and reliable company, according to friends and acquaintances. When I contacted the host by WhatsApp, she told me that she would send me a pre-approval email with all what I had to do (attached image). There, I could read about how to send money (Western Union) and where I had to forward the payment confirmation by email to Tammy (tammy_bangle@yahoo.es) and to Airbnb (automated@airbnb.com; same domain as the website, something that made me trust the email). On Tuesday, November 15th, at 7:45 AM, I sent the transfer and exchanged messages through WhatsApp with the host. Obviously, it was a scam.
Condo in Beautiful Hawaii Filled with Bed Bugs
I went on vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii recently. I booked four nights at the Kona Islander Inn in Kona. The host’s name is Ann, who is from the Seattle area. From the very beginning I should have known better to rent from her. Upon my initial booking back in September she did not greet me in any way, shape or form as a host. That was a huge red flag right there: no communication. I checked in on November 18th, 2016. On the second morning I woke up with bed bug bites on my arm. I contacted Ann about the situation, and sent photos of the bite marks as well. Her response was: “They do not look like bed bug bites; I have never had any problems before and I keep my condo so amazingly clean it’s not even possible for there to be bed bugs.”
Her strategy about this entire situation was to simply deny, deny, deny. Not getting any honest information from Ann, I went and talked with the lady working at the front desk that morning. I asked if there have been problems with bed bugs at this condo complex, she informed me there have. At this point, I informed Ann I was checking out of the unit and expected a refund for this awful experience. So I checked out, washed all my clothes at a laundromat for two hours, and spent another two hours trying to find new accommodations. The only thing in my price range I could find was a run-down hostel about a half mile from where I was staying. Dealing with this bed bug situation ruined my entire plans for that day, one of the very last days of my trip.
I requested a full refund for all reasons stated above through the Airbnb Resolution Center. Ann’s response, once again, was to simply deny any problem existed, that she kept her condo very clean, and stated she was not refunding my money. Now I have petitioned Airbnb to intervene to get my money back from this money-grubbing host who does not care one bit about her guests. Her unit is #142 of the Kona Islander Inn in Kona, Hawaii. Also check out the overall Yelp reviews of the Kona Islander Inn; they’re really horrible.
Terrible Experiences and Service from Airbnb
I’ve now used Airbnb three times and each time was a nightmare. The first time, the house had no heater and we froze. I left the host a note, but being a nice guy, chose not to review them. The second was in a lovely location, but the unit was dirty and had safety issues. Worst of all, it was built into a garage full of automotive parts and old cars; it smelled of oil and gasoline. My wife has a serious medical condition that is severely impacted by strong chemical smells. We contacted the host and cancelled the rest of our stay and had to find a hotel, which ended up costing a lot more. The third time, I contacted the host in advance and told them about my wife’s condition. I was given assurances that the rental did not have chemical smells and was told to expect an upscale luxury retreat in a great location. When we arrived (after eight hours of driving) the condo complex was a dive, with sketchy people standing outside smoking, nestled between two freeway overpasses. The real issue was that when we went inside, there were strong air freshener smells that immediately made my wife ill. Throwing open the window flooded the place with foul mold smells from the sprinkler system and smoke from the shady guys outside. I contacted the owner, who started to deny all of it, but then apologized and told me to take it up with Airbnb. I will say her taste in decorations was very nice, but I had to find a different place for us to stay again. Once again, it ended up costing me a lot more. I’ve been battling with Airbnb customer service ever since. I did manage to get my money back, but conversations about compensation for my extra lodging has (which one agent promised me) have gone nowhere and I never receive the calls they promise me.
Bad Experience Using Airbnb for the First Time
On August 28th, 2016, I paid the total amount for a two-bedroom condo with three beds in Chicago in full (which hotels never require). When my family arrived, there were only two beds, so that meant that three adult women all over 5’9″ had to share a queen bed. What a mess. With no permission or explanation beforehand, my host gave our room away to someone else. Even though I paid in full it didn’t belong to me. You see, the Cubs had won the World Series, and she most likely had made more renting out the larger unit. I texted her and asked her what had happened. She replied, “Oh, there is a queen mattress in the closet.” What an insult. I had no idea they could even do this. I was floored. Even though I had 24 hours for a cancellation, everything downtown was taken. Where would we go? I informed her there would have to be some sort of refund, and she said she would get back to me. In the end, I got $400.00 credited back to me, but only after I asked for it. The large queen mattress was put in the living and kitchen area, which limited our use of these rooms. It’s so unfair that they have my money, and I can say nothing. I will never book with Airbnb again. I’m sticking to hotels, where my stays have never gone wrong.
Last Minute Cancellation at Chic Apartments in Miami
Don’t trust this person for booking your holiday weekend; they are unreliable and untrustworthy. Anyone who cancels a booking to accept another offer for more money because it is a holiday weekend should get treatment a million times worse than what they have just done to us.
I had been planning a trip from NY to Miami for Art Basel for months with my closest friends, working around everyone’s busy schedules and of course the expensive and difficult task of booking somewhere to stay on a holiday weekend. After careful planning, we thought we had selected the ideal Airbnb: the place looked decent, the price was good, and the location was perfect. Because we had already been confirmed, approved, and billed, of course we thought we were safe with our choice of accommodations and had nothing to worry about. We are now less than two weeks from the start of our trip, and our host sent us a pathetic message to us explaining that there was “some glitch in their booking system with another site so actually someone else booked the same listing already and they didn’t notice.” As a result, they would be cancelling our reservation. The host was so rude he even suggested that “it’s not really [his] fault so we can’t be mad at [him].” In other words, this is a holiday weekend in Miami and they found someone to pay more.
Now, we are completely out of any other halfway decent options and have nowhere to stay. Not a single option that is still available on Airbnb is even close in comparison, and we have been completely screwed by this host. The best part is that Airbnb has done absolutely nothing to help us remedy this problem, and offer no help or suggestions as to what we can do when we call. Their feedback is that they are sorry, but not sorry enough to actually help.
What’s the Worst that can Happen with Airbnb?
How about traveling clear across the country only to find you can’t get into your rental and the host is nowhere to be found? In October, we booked two weeks at this lovely place near San Diego, CA. They looked legit: the owner is a lawyer, and their farm had recently been featured on the news. In fact, their listing mentioned staying at the property would fund an animal rescue. Who doesn’t love that? Not to mention they had glowing reviews as recent as a week before we left. So we felt comfortable with this choice. Imagine our surprise and dismay when we travelled 3000 miles to arrive at the home with no one to greet us and no way to get in. Mind you we had been up since 3:00 AM, and had now surpassed the 16-hour mark of being awake, schlepping our luggage around, having plane and airport funk on us, and wanting desperately to lie down and rest.
Multiple frantic calls and texts to the owner were not answered or returned, leaving us upset and in a panic about finding a new place that could take us for two weeks. I had communicated with the host, John, before arriving and he was well aware of our arrival time. There was a code lock on the door for which he could have easily sent us the code ahead of time, or even that morning, and he failed to do that. After an hour of calls to Airbnb (which was irritating in its own special way) and multiple area hotels, we booked a room at a Quality Inn; it was not what we were hoping for at all but it was clean and at least we could get in.
The host finally called us back and actually said, “Hey, how’s it going!”, as if he had no idea what was transpiring. As I felt my blood begin to boil I handed the phone to my boyfriend who told him that it was not ok that he left us hanging and we were refunded our money and are now moving on, in a much kinder way than I would have been able to.
So, a word of warning: you can’t solely depend on the reviews on Airbnb, because reviews like this one can’t be posted. They ended up canceling my reservation so now it’s as if I had no connection to it and am unable to leave a review. How many reviews are there for places that couldn’t be posted? Needless to say we are done with Airbnb. We’ve had two out of three bad experiences. It’s too bad, because some of these places are lovely and have more to offer than a hotel room.
Airbnb Almost Ruined our Honeymoon
My wife and I wanted to go to the Virginia mountains for our honeymoon. We had never used Airbnb before but thought that we would give it a try and rented a cabin. When we arrived we found the place to be only partially cleaned from the previous guests, we couldn’t get any of the heaters to work, and there were parts of the cabin completely off limits due to renovations (that was not stated anywhere in the listing). We spoke with the host and they said that they were sending over the maid. After waiting for 45 minutes we felt like we were being robbed of the first day of our honeymoon. We hadn’t seen the maid yet, and we couldn’t help but think about what else might not be clean in the house that we haven’t yet discovered and can’t be easily seen (like bed sheets).
A few more phone calls to the host and finally I was offered to either get a full refund or to find another one of their cabins to be set up. Although we thought the offer for a refund was considerate, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar secluded mountain town with night approaching. We had no idea where we would stay or even how far the next hotel was. We opted to take a look at the other cabins they had available but we had issues with the wifi and barely had any cell phone reception. After a road trip looking for somewhere we could sit to get some Internet connectivity, we browsed their listings but couldn’t find anything comparable to what we had except for one. However, it was slightly more expensive and would have cost a total of about $100 more total for our stay there. We called the host back to inform them of our selection but explained that we weren’t interested in handing over more money, even if it was only $100; we weren’t very confident in their hospitality thus far.
The host was not willing to work with us on the extra cost, so we opted for a full refund and spent the rest of our night searching for where we would stay during our trip. Luckily we still had a great time, but never got our refund until our entire honeymoon was over and we had made several more phone calls. Even then we didn’t receive a full refund, as it was short $124. The host explained that this was because Airbnb’s cut of the deal was $124 and that I would have to take it up with them to get that back. So a few back and forth emails happen and eventually, I’m offered the $124 refund from Airbnb. However, they were sure to let me know that this was a one-time courtesy and not to expect it in the future because these funds are “what Airbnb uses to cover their business expenses.” I’m glad I got the refund, but I’m astounded that they believe that it would be acceptable to justify charging any amount of money to a client when the only service they were provided was absolute inconvenience. Save your money and your time and use another service.
Creepy Experience with Airbnb in NYC
I am just sharing a very bad experience with Airbnb that I had a couple of nights ago. I booked for a friend who is out of the country with a host in Hamilton Heights, New York. First of all, her listing says that it is a quiet and spacious place. The sleeping area was just part of the living room, with a couch, separated by a curtain. The day after my friend arrived, the host’s mother slept in the living room, snoring all night, and making my friend very uncomfortable. The room didn’t have any blinds so my friend needed to sleep with pillows to cover herself from the light. In addition, she asked my friend not to speak one night at 9:00 PM when she received a call, because her mother was sleeping in the living room. Apart from that, the host’s boyfriend was living in her room. So in a very small apartment there were four people.
The third night, my friend went out to smoke a cigarette and when she returned (around 12:00 AM) the door was locked from the inside. She tried to enter, but she couldn’t open the door. After that she knocked on the door without any answer from the inside. She knocked several times. She was able to call me from outside, because she is from a foreign country and didn’t have internet. So she called me through Facebook. I heard how she knocked on the door without any response. She spent the night in my home, but she was very scared without any money, ID, clothes, and unable to speak the language.
The next morning I went back with her, and there was the host, telling me “that she should have rung the bell, and that they didn’t hear the door because they used earplugs.” Of course, my friend took her things and we ran from that kind of host. I then called Airbnb customer service and I requested a refund. They only refunded me one night, and I lost $430 dollars, which covered the rest of the stay. She said that my guest should have read the lock instructions (she never saw any lock instructions, nor this is explained on the listing). Also the customer representative said that my friend should have rung the bell. What is the difference between a bell and knocking on the door at 1:00 AM in a small apartment? It makes no sense.
I was treated badly. I feel robbed and disappointed with this company. This host charged me $40/night for this horrific experience. I will never book through Airbnb again.
Airbnb Allowed me to be Scammed in Hawaii
I booked a house from December 23-25 in Maui. The host asked me to use a wire transaction for the deposit and cleaning fee to his private account, a total amount of $840. He claimed the deposit is refundable but the cleaning fee isn’t. The first time he gave me his “secretary’s” account to wire the transfer but it fell through. I guess I should have stopped there. Then he gave me his property manager’s account so I filed the transaction on October 24th and it went through. He said he received the money and the house was booked. Then I received a message saying my reservation has been canceled. He explained to me that this was a result of a system error due to Airbnb being updated. He suggested I make my reservation directly with the property manager. He also asked me to proceed with the rent payment to his property manager’s account so they could complete the reservation.
As of this point, I had already wired him $840 and he still asked me to wire $749 more to his property manager’s account. He said as soon as I did that my reservation would have been officially made. He also said it was a private booking but it would show up on the Airbnb website as soon as the upgrade was finished. This was my first time using Airbnb and I thought it was normal that he sent me a text massage directly. I already wired $840 to his account. He asked me afterwards to also wire the rent, $749, to his account. Then I realized something was wrong. I replied to him, saying that my family had an emergency and we had to cancel the trip; I wanted my deposit back. He said he understood perfectly and will refund my money the moment he receives it.
Now it’s been one day and I still haven’t heard back from him. I texted him a few times but he still hasn’t replied to me. The property is in Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii. The host’s name is David. His email address is davidforster518@yahoo.com.